Author Archives: Heidi Boe

R&M Tips: Lubrication

Inspecting sight glasses is oil analysis in its simplest form. When done correctly, machine inspections can often uncover potential issues before they become catastrophic. Aside from checking for oil level, you should also be concerned with oil color, clarity, signs of foam or water, and staining on the glass itself. Getting more from your lube inspections is achievable by digging ...

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R&M Tips: Better Grouting Practices

As our infrastructure ages, some say that grout failures are inevitable. However, poor base installation practices often reduce the life of our equipment. Here are some examples.

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A new resource for R&M professionals

For more than a decade, TAPPI has partnered with IDCON to provide its members with valuable information about reliability and maintenance issues in the pulp and paper industry.  That’s why it’s exciting to finally be inaugurating this new section in Paper360°, TAPPI’s official member magazine. I think a humming paper machine—whether it’s running tissue, kraft, liner, or a specialty grade—is ...

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ASPI Award Winners Announced

ASPI offers two awards each year: ASPI Customer Executive of the Year, and the ASPI Excellence in Leadership Award. These awards not only provide recognition for the recipient, they also promote ASPI’s mission of supporting industry performance. Both of this year’s recipients (featured here) accepted their awards at the association’s spring meeting held in Sarasota, FL, in February, and shared ...

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Pulp and Paper Safety Association to Support New Initiatives

SAMANTHA GEIER In the early 1940s, a group of safety professionals gathered to form the Southern Pulp and Paper Safety Association. This non-profit, member-based organization grew to become the leading association devoted to safety throughout the forest products industry and is now known as the Pulp and Paper Safety Association (PPSA). Since its inception, PPSA has been dedicated to promoting ...

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Europe’s Political Risks and the Euro

DAVID KATSNELSON The “Brexit” vote in the summer of 2016 and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States were strong signals of a dramatic change in the direction of the globalization trend, with both of these events confounding the predictions of experts and talking heads. It seems that we are now embarking on a cycle ...

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Invention, Innovation, and US Jobs

BEN THORP, HARRY SEAMANS, AND MASOOD AKHTAR According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) there were 17,619,000 Americans employed in the manufacturing section in January 1998; by January 2010, this figure had declined to 11,462,000, or a loss of 6,157,000 factory jobs in 12 years (Hemphill et al. 2015). This does not count the number of “consequential” jobs that ...

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The New Normal?

Chinese paper companies’ overseas expansion strategy NEO WU While papermaking was invented in China, it was western countries that built it into a major industry and made it the ubiquitous commodity it is today. But China is poised to reclaim its central role in the paper industry on a global stage…and then some.  Over the past 30 years, China’s paper ...

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TJ Summaries

The papers summarized here are from the January 2017 issue of TAPPI Journal. TAPPI Journal is an online publication of relevant and timely peer-reviewed research delivered via email and free to all TAPPI members. To receive TAPPI Journal, join TAPPI at www.tappi.org. BIOREFINERY Cellulosic ethanol byproducts as a bulking agent J.M. Considine, D. Coffin, J.Y. Zhu, D.H. Mann, and X. ...

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